The effects of task similarity during representation learning in brains and neural networks

The complexity of our environment poses significant challenges for adaptive behavior. Recognizing shared structures across tasks can theoretically improve learning through generalization. However, how such shared representations emerge and influence performance remains poorly understood. Contrary to expectations, our findings revealed that individuals trained on tasks with similar low-dimensional structures performed worse than those trained on dissimilar tasks. Magnetoencephalography revealed correlated neural representations in the same-structure group and anticorrelated ones in the different-structure group. Crucially, practice reduced this performance gap and shifted the neural representations of the tasks in the same-structure group towards anticorrelation, resembling those in the different-structure group. A neural network model trained on similar tasks replicated these findings: tasks with similar structures require more iterations to orthogonalize their representations. These results highlight a complex interplay between task similarity, neural dynamics, and behavior, challenging traditional assumptions about learning and generalization.